PSY 376 Final Exam Study

Dr. Kushner is planning on conducting a study next semester. He is curious as to whether sleep deprivation is associated with poorer cognitive performance. For example, if you sleep poorly the night before a big exam, will you do worse? Dr. Kushner is especially curious about selective sleep deprivation, where people are kept from entering REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Using an electroencephalograph (EEG) to monitor brain waves, he plans to let participants sleep until they enter REM sleep and then wake them. After the participants are awake for one minute, Dr. Kushner plans to let them return to sleep. As they enter REM sleep again, he will wake them again and follow the same procedure. He plans to do this through the entire eight-hour sleep session. The following morning, participants will be asked to take a sample SAT test. As a psychologist who primarily does research, Dr. Kushner is most concerned with which APA standard of ethics?

8

When using correlation coefficients to evaluate reliability, which of the following is undesirable?

A negative correlation coefficient

When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose," which two questions should you ask yourself as you read?

"What is the argument?" and "What is the evidence to support the argument?"

Which of the following phrases would NOT indicate that a researcher is making a causal claim?

"is at higher risk of"

You are allowed ________ "free" absences for the term.

2

You will be evaluated ________ time(s) by your research group members.

3

Which of the following is NOT possible?

A measure is valid but not reliable

Ellie is looking for a summary of research on the effects of childhood abuse on adult depression. Which of the following scientific sources would be an ideal source?

A meta-analysis.

What is the difference between a ration scale of measurement and an interval scale of measurement?

A ration scale of measurement has a zero value that actually means "nothing" or "the absence of something," but an interval scale does not.

When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose," which section should you read first?

Abstract

Dr. Ramon makes the following claim: "Watching television leads people to spend less time communicating with their spouses, study says." Dr. LaSalle makes the claim: "Research shows that making more money correlates with spending less time talking with your spouse." Which type of claim is Dr. LaSalle making?

Association claim

When reading an empirical journal article "with a purpose," why should you read the abstract first?

Because it provides an overview of the article.

The fact that family members were put at risk as a result of the Tuskegee syphilis study is an example of the violation of which ethical principle?

Beneficence

After reading the chapter, Cyril says to himself, "I am sure other people might engage in faulty thinking, but I never would." What is Cyril experiencing?

Bias and blind spot

In which of the following ways are content and face validity similar?

Both involve subjective judgments

You read a news article titled, "New Drug Reduces OCD Symptoms in Mice" about a recent scientific study. To evaluate whether the title's claim is supported, you should do which of the following?

Check whether the authors established covariance, temporal precedence, and internal validity.

What is the term for a researcher's definition of the variable in question at a theoretical level?

Conceptual definition

Asking questions to get the answers we want is known as:

Confirmation bias

What is the most common sampling technique in behavioral research?

Convenience sampling

According to its conceptual definition, a variable should be related to a particular behavior. If a researcher is able to demonstrate that his measure of the variable is related to the behavior, then he has established which of the following?

Criterion validity

A correlation-based statistic called ________ is commonly used to determine internal reliability.

Cronbach's alpha

Dr. Ramon makes the following claim: "Watching television leads people to spend less time communicating with their spouses, study says." Dr. LaSalle makes the claim: "Research shows that making more money correlates with spending less time talking with your spouse." Which of the following statements is true of Dr. Ramon's and Dr. LaSalle's claims?

Dr. Ramon's claim goes further than Dr. LaSalle's claim

Dr. White reads about a new theory that states that depression is caused by increased levels of estrogen in the womb. To test this theory, she conducted a study comparing the level of estrogen in amniotic fluid in individuals who were later diagnosed with depression with the level of those who did not develop depression. Dr. White found no differences between the groups in estrogen levels in amniotic fluid. What should Dr. White do next?

Evaluate the ways in which her study differed from previous studies that supported this theory.

According to Johnson and Bones (2007), response rates were faster for the Alive+me/Dead+not me category than the Dead+me/Alive+not me category.

False

You can use direct quotations in your research papers.

False

The continuing mistrust of public officials that was a result of the Tuskegee syphilis study is an example of the violation of which ethical principle?

Fidelity and Responsibility

Tim tells you that the best way to make friends is by opening the conversation with a joke. He can easily recall all the friends he met by telling a joke and also the times he opened with chitchat and didn't befriend the person. If you were concerned that Tim was making the blind spot bias, what would you ask him?

Have you tested this conclusion systematically?

For his research methods class project, Hiro is studying the effect of pet ownership on stress levels. Although a lot of research has been done on dog and cat owners, not much is known about other pets so Hiro decides to study bird owners. Which of the following would demonstrate a snowball sampling technique?

He asks bird owners to give him the names of other bird owners

Dr. Smitherman insists that all his research assistants know how to be producers of research. All of the following relate to this requirement EXCEPT:

He wants to make sure they have previously been participants in research studies.

Dr. Ewell, a developmental psychologist, is planning on conducting a study that involves watching children play together to determine how sharing behavior occurs in same-sex friend pairs compared to opposite-sex friend pairs. Imagine that Dr. Ewell wants to videotape the children interacting in the park. Which of the following is true?

He will likely need to get permission to videotape the children prior to doing so

When you are interrogating the external validity of a sample, which is the most important question to ask?

How was the sample collected?

Which types of reliability can be analyzed with scatterplots?

Interrater reliability and test-retest reliability

The men in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study were from a socially disadvantaged group. This violated which of the following principles of the Belmont Report?

Justice

Hannah just finished reading an empirical journal article for a class project. Where should she go is she wants to look for a list of the study's hypotheses or research questions?

Last paragraph of the introduction.

Which of the following statements is true of observational data?

Observational measures can be used to make frequency claims

Which of the following is true of question wording?

Researchers may alter the wording of a question to determine if it does have an effect on results

Your professor says that researchers do not make ethical decisions alone. What does this mean?

Researchers must consider the opinions of others, including institutional review board (IRB) members and peers

Which of the following is a benefit of the peer-review process?

Reviewers' names are kept anonymous so they can be open in their critiques of an article.

Angela reads about a study in which cell phone use is associated with migraine headaches. She says, "Well, that study is not valid because I use a cell phone more than anyone I know and I never get migraines." Based on her comment, Angela may be forgetting which of the following?

Science is probabilistic

Javier wants his lab partner to tell him if he thinks the article he found for their project is appropriate. Rather than have him read the article, which two parts of the paper could Javier have his lab partner read to get a summary of the article?

The abstract and the first paragraph of the discussion.

Which of the following is true when asking people questions about themselves?

The confidence people have in their memories is not strongly related to the accuracy of their memory

A common finding in the study of aggression is that exposure to television is associated with increased aggressive behavior in children. You know this relationship may not be causal because you are no sure which occurred first: watching television or being aggressive. You are questioning which of the following rules of causation?

The criterion of temporal precedence.

Nadia submits her article to a scientific journal for publication. Who makes the final decision on whether her article is published in that scientific journal?

The editor of the journal.

Why are double-barreled questions problematic?

They may have poor construct validity

Why is it important to adopt the mindset of a scientific reasoner?

To avoid falling to the pitfalls of personal biases.

Jenny reads the following headline on an online article: "If You're Sexist, People Will Think You're Racist, and Vice Versa." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Sanchez and colleagues, 2017.) This study found that members of stigmatized groups are threatened by prejudice directed at other stigmatized groups. Their results showed that White women can be threatened by racism, and men of color threatened by sexism, and that these perceptions made participants expect unfair treatment. The results of this study can be generalized to which of the following groups?

White women and African American men

According to several researchers, including Kahneman (2011), Type 2 thinking tends to

be slow and deliberate.

Research papers are graded according to the following criteria: mechanically sound, reasonable, APA style, well organized and ________.

clearly written

If researchers measure every member of a population, they have:

conducted a census

Jenny reads the following headline on an online article: "If You're Sexist, People Will Think You're Racist, and Vice Versa." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Sanchez and colleagues, 2017.) This study found that members of stigmatized groups are threatened by prejudice directed at other stigmatized groups. Their results showed that White women can be threatened by racism, and men of color threatened by sexism, and that these perceptions made participants expect unfair treatment. Because of the design of this study, Sanchez and colleagues are likely more interested in ________ than ________.

construct validity; generalizing to all minority groups

If a measurement looks like it is a plausible operationalization of a conceptual variable, then it has:

face validity

If measurement looks like it is a plausible operationalization of a conceptual variable, then it has:

face validity

When examining the statistical validity of a frequency claim, one should look for the:

margin of error estimate

Occam's razor states that the simplest solution is the best, all things being equal. This speak to a theory's:

parsimony

Jenny reads the following headline on an online article: "If You're Sexist, People Will Think You're Racist, and Vice Versa." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Sanchez and colleagues, 2017.) This study found that members of stigmatized groups are threatened by prejudice directed at other stigmatized groups. Their results showed that White women can be threatened by racism, and men of color threatened by sexism, and that these perceptions made participants expect unfair treatment. In this study, ________ us a conceptual definition of one of their primary variables.

perceived prejudiced attitudes

Another word for hypothesis is a(n) ________.

prediction

In the theory-data cycle, theories first lead to ________.

questions

You read research that found that first-born children tend to have higher IQs than their siblings. However, you typically earn higher grades than your older brother. Scientists might explain this discrepancy by saying that:

research is probabilistic.

The principle of justice calls for a balance between ________ and ________.

the kind of people who participate in research; the kind of people who benefit from it

Which of the following is an example of translational research?

A sports psychologist who uses information on how we emotionally process victory to design an intervention for improving mental stamina during athletic performance.

Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, " I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, " I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, " I think other people think I am really special." Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Rodriquez gives the measure to a group of participants on the first day of the semester and again on the last day of the semester. Dr. Rodriquez is examining the scatterplot of the data she collected on the first day of the semester and the last day of the semester. On the scatterplot, she sees that the dots are very close to forming a diagonal line. This indicates which of the following?

A strong relationship

In which of the following studies is self-report the best data collection option?

A study examining the intensity of pain during natural childbirth

In which of the following cases would a large sample especially be needed?

A study of teenagers whose parents are both deployed overseas in the military

Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that there are three fundamental needs that are required for human growth and fulfillment: relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Susan predicts that students who have these needs met in their psychology class feel happier and more satisfied with the class. She collects data and finds that students who feel more related and competent do feel happier but that feeling more autonomous does not seem to matter. Susan thinks that maybe autonomy is only necessary when people are in situations in which they are not being evaluated. Deci and Ryan's general statement of how the three needs are related to growth and fulfillment is an example of which of the following?

A theory.

Which of the following is an example of being a consumer of research?

Attending a psychological conference.

In looking at a scatterplot of interrater reliability, why would a researcher want to see all the dots close to the line of agreement?

Because it indicates that the researcher's two research assistants/raters are making similar measurements

To evaluate how well a study supports a frequency claim, you need to focus on evaluating which of the following validities?

Construct validity and external validity.

Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to his supervisor, who is also an expert in pathological gambling. His supervisor says that his measure appears to test all the components of pathological gambling, including feeling restless when attempting to stop gambling, jeopardizing jobs in order to keep gambling, and using gambling to escape from problems and a bad mood. Given this information, Dr. Sheffield's measure has evidence of which of the following?

Content validity

Professor Kramer has decided to measure how happy his students are with his teaching this semester. He is teaching two classes this semester—Psychology and Law and Introduction to Neuroscience. He gives his students a survey. 43 of 50 Introduction to Neuroscience students and 46 of 48 Psychology and Law students complete the survey. Based on this information, which of the following can Dr. Kramer say?

His sample came from his population of interest

Dr. Gonzalez is a peer reviewer for a manuscript submitted to a journal. He is likely to provide comments on all of the following?

How well the research was conducted.

What does it mean that behavioral research is probabilistic?

Inferences drawn from behavioral research are not expected to explain all cases.

Dr. Rodriquez is considering conducting a study examining whether narcissistic people have poorer romantic relationships than those who are not narcissistic. One of her first tasks is to determine which of her participants are narcissistic and which are not. She decides to use the scale created by a colleague, the Donal scale. Question 1 reads, " I tend not to think about other people as much as I think about myself." Question 2 reads, " I do not have a high opinion of myself." Question 3 reads, " I think other people think I am really special." Before using the measure in her study, Dr. Rodriquez analyzes the data she gets from her students. She looks at the relationship between each of the individual questions. She sees that participants who agree with Question 1 also agree with Question 3 and disagree with Question 2. This is a test of which of the following?

Internal reliability

In interrogating the construct validity of a measure, which question should a researcher ask?

Is there enough evidence that this measure is valid?

Which of the following is a reason why it is important to be a knowledgeable consumer of research?

It is important to understand whether the information you read is accurate.

Matthew is reading an empirical journal article and wants to know whether the authors used the Big Five Inventory (BFI-44) or the NEO-PI to measure extraversion. In which section would he find this information?

Method

Which of the following is a unique threat to construct validity found only in behavioral observation?

Observer bias

Dr. Ellison finds a relation between amount of sleep and problem solving. Specifically, having a higher amount of sleep the night before an exam is associated with higher scores on two measures of problem solving. This is an example of which type of association?

Positive association

James is asked about the best way to study for an exam. He responds that the best way to study is by making flash cards. He easily thinks of all the times he used flash cards and he made As. However, he fails to take into consideration all the times he made As and did not use flash cards and the times he used flash cards and did not do well. His faulty thinking is an example of:

Present/present bias

Unobtrusive observation is done to counteract which of the following?

Reactivity

Online surveys commonly suffer from which of the following?

Self-selection

What makes certain constructs harder to operationalize?

Some constructs are difficult to observe

Which of the following is true of variables?

Some variables can be either manipulated or measured.

The aim of the Tuskegee study was to examine which disease?

Syphilis

Which aspect of the peer-review cycle allows for the greatest amount of honesty in reviews?

The anonymity of the peer reviewers.

Which of the following is a disadvantage of using open-ended questions?

The answers must be coded

Which of the following indicated that an article's claims are based on research?

The article describes how a scientific study measured a variable

Dr. Kang, a cognitive psychologist, conducts an experiment examining the effect of emotion on memory. He provides lists of 15 words to two groups of participants at his university. He puts the names of all the participants in a hat. The first 20 names he assigns to Group A and the last 20 he assigns to Group B. Group A is given a list of words that are very emotional in content (e.g., passion, murder). Group B is given a list of words that are neutral in content (e.g., houseplant, desk). He then measures how many words each group is able to remember after being distracted for 5 minutes by watching a video about the history of the university. He finds that Group A remembers 15% more words than Group B. Dr. Kang sends his study to a journal to be published. One of the peer reviewers questions the way Dr. Kang manipulated emotion, arguing that being exposed to emotional words does not make one emotional. The reviewer is questioning which of the following?

The construct validity of the study.

Dr. Hadden wants to conduct a study that will allow him to make claims that apply to all college students. Which of the following validities is he prioritizing?

The external validity of the study

When determining whether a study should be conducted, we have to balance which two issues?

The potential risks to participants vs. the value of knowledge we can gain

The issue of obtaining informed consent deals with which of the following principles of the Belmont Report?

The principle of respect for persons

Deci and Ryan (1985, 2001) have proposed that there are three fundamental needs that are required for human growth and fulfillment: relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Susan predicts that students who have these needs met in their psychology class feel happier and more satisfied with the class. She collects data and finds that students who feel more related and competent do feel happier but that feeling more autonomous does not seem to matter. Susan thinks that maybe autonomy is only necessary when people are in situations in which they are not being evaluated. Susan's hypothesis was not completely supported by her data. What does this mean?

The theory may need to be amended.

A common finding in the study of aggression is that exposure to television is associated with increased aggressive behavior in children. You are curious as to whether peer pressure is really to blame (peer pressure encourages you to watch television and peer pressure encourages you to be aggressive). You are questioning which of the following criteria of causation?

The third-variable criterion

Which of the following is a benefit of using a wiki to review psychological research?

The wiki page can be corrected quickly.

Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. To test his measure, Dr. Sheffield gives his measure to a group of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA) and another group in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He finds that people in the GA group have higher scores on his new measure than people in the AA group. Why did Dr. Sheffield do this?

To obtain evidence for criterion validity

People are more likely to have misconceptions if they engage in ________ versus ________.

Type 1 thinking; Type 2 thinking

Dr. Sheffield is a clinical psychologist who specializes in treating pathological gambling. Pathological gambling is defined as being unable to resist impulses to gamble. Bothered by not having a good measure that he can give to clients to determine whether they are suffering from this condition, he creates a new measure of pathological gambling. The measure has 15 questions, and it takes 20 minutes to complete. If Dr. Sheffield's measure does not actually measure pathological gambling, his measure is said to lack which of the following?

Validity

Anderson is reading his morning paper and sees the following headline: "Men Should Avoid Rock Music When Playing Board Games." (This headline is based on a study conducted by Fancourt, Burton, & Williamon, 2016.) In the study, men and women played the game "Operation" when listening to different types of music. Male participants performed worse when listening to AC/DC than when listening to Mozart, but female participants' performance did not differ based on music. In this study, the authors were interested in participants' board game performance. Which of the following would be a reasonable operational definition of performance?

Whether participants won against a partner

Which of the following is true of a non-representative sample in a research claim?

You should ask whether it is relevant to what the researchers are measuring

Dr. Hoda measures job satisfaction and number of years of education. In examining her scatterplot, she sees that the cloud of points has no slope. This indicates which type of relationship?

Zero association

Translational research is best thought of as ________ basic research and applied research.

a bridge between